--- title: "Evangelos Zappas paid for the first modern Olympic Games in Athens on November 15, 1859, 37 years before 1896" url: https://badiyaa.com/evangelos-zappas-olympics-athens-1859/ published: 2026-11-15T05:36:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-15T05:36:00+00:00 section: History publisher: Badiyaa --- # Evangelos Zappas paid for the first modern Olympic Games in Athens on November 15, 1859, 37 years before 1896 Evangelos Zappas funded the first modern Olympic revival in Athens on November 15, 1859, held in a city square 37 years before the 1896 Games. On November 15, 1859, a crowd that took in roughly half the people of Athens packed a city square to watch the first modern revival of the Olympic Games. One of the runners was a police officer who had been posted to guard the crowd. He walked off his post and joined the race. The man who paid for it all was Evangelos Zappas (his first name is also spelled Evangelis), a wealthy Greek businessman living in Romania. His games came 37 years before the first International Olympic Committee Olympics opened in the same city in 1896. ## Cold weather, comic races and a prize from England The ancient Panathenaic Stadium was not yet restored, so the 1859 contests were held in Loudovikou Square, known today as Koumoundourou Square. Only athletes of Greek ethnicity took part, some from the Greek state and some from Greek communities in the Ottoman Empire. They ran, threw the discus and javelin, wrestled, jumped and climbed poles. It was one of the first mass gatherings in modern Athens, and nobody knew how to manage it. The weather was too cold, the site was a poor fit for sport, and thousands in the back rows saw nothing. Cash prizes drew in porters and laborers rather than trained athletes. Along with the wandering police officer, a beggar who claimed to be blind entered the races too. One prize had come from far away. The Wenlock Olympian Class in Shropshire, England, founded by the doctor William Penny Brookes, sent 10 pounds sterling for the winner of the longest race. Petros Velissarios of Smyrna took it. ## How a businessman talked a king into it Getting to that messy first day took three years of lobbying, and it nearly did not happen. Talk of reviving the ancient contests had been around Greece for a generation. The poet and editor Panagiotis Soutsos used the Olympics as a symbol in an 1833 poem and sent a proposal to the young Greek government in 1835. King Otto liked it, and then nothing happened. Zappas, inspired by Soutsos, decided to fund the revival himself. In early 1856 he wrote to King Otto through diplomatic channels, offering to pay for the whole project and to put up cash prizes for the winners. The pushback came from inside the government. Some politicians thought athletic games would make Greece look backward next to the industrial powers of Europe. Foreign minister Alexandros Rangavis told Zappas that times had changed: “Today, nations do not become distinguished, as then, by having the best athletes and runners, but the champions in industry, handwork and agriculture.” He suggested “Industrial Olympic Games” instead. After months of silence and a press campaign by Soutsos in July 1856, Otto compromised. The games could go ahead every four years alongside industrial and agricultural expositions, with Zappas paying for them through an Olympic trust fund. ## From a city square to the 1896 Games The thread from that chilly square to the modern Olympics is short and traceable: - **1859:** First Zappas Olympics, Loudovikou Square, Athens - **1861:** Brookes adds javelin at a target, borrowed from the Athens program, to his Wenlock games - **1865:** Zappas dies, leaving money to continue the games and build venues - **1870:** Games move to the restored Panathenaic Stadium, with seats for 30,000 - **1888:** The Zappeion exhibition hall, paid for from his estate, opens - **1890:** Pierre de Coubertin visits Wenlock and picks up many of Brookes’s ideas - **1896:** The first IOC Olympics open in the Panathenaic Stadium That stadium went on to host archery and the marathon finish at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and the Zappeion served as the media center that year. For more on how the Games shaped later history, read our stories on [Peter Norman’s support for Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968](https://badiyaa.com/peter-norman-tommie-smith-john-carlos-salute/) and on [Ted Turner’s Goodwill Games, born from the Olympic boycotts](https://badiyaa.com/ted-turner-goodwill-games-moscow/). Athens itself has older layers too, as our piece on [the Parthenon’s lives as a church and a mosque](https://badiyaa.com/parthenon-church-mosque-athens-acropolis/) explains. Zappas never saw the stadium he paid to restore filled with athletes. The 1870 games he funded from beyond the grave drew 20,000 to 25,000 spectators to watch 31 qualified athletes. ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Zappas Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zappas_Olympics) *Image: Jebulon, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*